


moonshine and morning coffees

by motorcyclefl1p



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst/Comfort, Bucky Barnes & Shuri Friendship, Bucky recovering, Bucky remembers, Frottage, Genius Shuri (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Magical Healing Cock, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Captain America: Civil War (2016), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), References to Depression, Sorta Dubcon But Mostly He's Just Surprised, Wakanda, implied/referenced suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:55:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23573491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motorcyclefl1p/pseuds/motorcyclefl1p
Summary: Steve visits in Wakanda for the first time after Bucky comes out of cryo.Or, how we might've gotten from sleepy Jesus!Bucky at the end of "Black Panther" to sweet smiling hair-conditioned Bucky in "Infinity War".
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 8
Kudos: 119





	moonshine and morning coffees

The guidebook had gushed about Wakanda’s sunset at length, as if compensating for a lack of 21st-century charms in a poor and reclusive Third World country. And that afternoon, as Steve followed the winding path uphill to the crest of the last gentle grassy slope overlooking the lake, he told himself he was slowing down to take it all in properly—the deepening shadows in the treeline across the way, the last rays of the sinking sun purpling across the indigo sky and gilding the clouds and mountaintops in gold. From the scattered huts behind him came echoes of children laughing and joking, their parents calling them in to dinner, birds doing much the same roosting for the night. Smells of roasting meat and simmering soup drifted on the wind rapidly cooling with dusk. Steve thrust his hands into his pockets and paused on the hilltop, closing his eyes, breathing deeply of cooking fires and settling livestock. He told himself he wanted to take it slow, savor the moment, enjoy a rare evening of peace and quiet in a beautiful country he was finally revisiting after months and months of doggedly battling the urge.

He definitely wasn’t slowing down because there was a growing jumble of feelings he didn’t dare put into words gnawing in the pit of his stomach, the closer he got to meeting Bucky again. They hadn’t seen each other since Bucky had gone into cryo months ago.

“He’s fine.” Shuri’s eyes had creased impishly when he’d finally asked, after enduring with what he thought superhuman fortitude nearly an hour of pleasantries with her and Queen Nakia upon his arrival with Natasha. “He has already learned far too many bad words in our language from the little boys of the village. So I would say he is recovering very well.”

Steve had nodded with what he thought appropriate dignity and poise, Shuri watching him with a bright, expectant grin.

“Has he asked for me?” Steve hadn’t said next.

“Should I go visit him?” he hadn’t asked either.

But Shuri had told him where to find Bucky anyway, and shown Steve to a maglev craft suddenly waiting in the palace driveway before he had even decided on a discreet way to take his leave. Queen Nakia had waved him on graciously, not commenting on the blush Steve had felt already creeping all the way up to the tips of his ears.

For all the haste with which he’d left the palace, barely containing his impatience when the village elders spotted him and waylaid him with snacks and tea and endless selfies on their state-of-the-art phones, Steve idled now on the hilltop. The sunset really was very pretty, he told himself. But now in the fading sunlight he picked out a blue-cloaked, long-haired figure emerging from the doorway of the lone hut down by the foot of the hill. Bucky reached up and lit the lanterns by the doorway and at the open gate to his small yard. Then he turned and began to gather laundry from a clothesline, his movements calm and unhurried.

Steve watched him, couldn’t take his eyes off him, chest squeezing around every breath. 

He could leave now, he thought. He’d just wanted to see for himself. He’d just had to know. He hadn’t even said to tell Bucky he was coming.

And he was obviously fine, as Shuri had said. Doing great. Making a new life. Finding his peace. Moving on. By himself.

Steve had just blinked back a wave of tears when Bucky stopped and frowned straight up the hill at him. 

If he hadn’t been burdened with an armful of laundry, Steve knew with an uncontrollable gust of a wet laugh, Bucky would have put his hand on his hip just like his ma’d used to do.

Steve was striding downhill before he knew it, suddenly self-conscious, looking everywhere but at Bucky still watching him. All Steve felt now was the too-familiar heat of tightly suppressed longing in his chest and undeniable happiness across his face.

Bucky had filled out a little, Steve saw as he approached. Bucky looked healthier, his hair soft and clean and half up in a knot, his beard neatly trimmed.

“About fucking time,” Bucky said, and Steve grinned weakly, fisting his hands deep in his pockets at the voice he hadn’t heard in much too long. “I thought I’d have to come find you in some back alley again.”

“I think I’ve caused enough international incidents as it is.” Steve fought the impulse to hug him, but already Bucky had turned away, heading toward the hut.

“Latch the gate behind you,” Bucky called back over his shoulder. “Sometimes the neighbors’ pigs get out.”

Having dutifully locked the gate and swept the perimeter for any wayward porcines, Steve followed Bucky into the cottage, relieved that the cool, lamplit semidarkness inside helped hide his flushed face. 

“Shuri told me you were coming. If I’d known sooner I would’ve brought out the good china.” Bucky disappeared behind a curtained doorway with his bounty. Steve glanced around him at the stacks of dog-eared paperbacks and notebooks, the lone shabby chair piled with blankets and an unattended tablet, the unwashed “My Friend Went to Coachella and All I Got was This Lousy Mug” mug sitting by the kitchen sink. Steve touched a teapot set out with two mismatched cups on a side table. It was just barely warm.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said past the lump lodged in his throat. “Had to make some detours along the way.”

Bucky re-emerged from the room, not quite meeting Steve’s eyes. “Well, you might as well stay for dinner. You eat goat?”

“I don’t want to bother you,” Steve began, as Bucky bustled around the little kitchen area.

“My ma would have my hide if I kicked you out now, Steve.” A ghost of a smile flashed across Bucky’s face before he turned away from Steve, uncovering a steaming pot on the counter. “My cooking probably won’t kill you.”

“Didn’t before, and that’s saying something.” 

Steve wondered if the slight curve of Bucky’s mouth was just a trick of the light. Bucky gestured wordlessly to the single stool at the little kitchen table and Steve sat down with a last hapless glance around the cottage. 

“I’m not real prepared for visitors.” Bucky’s tone was almost apologetic as he placed a fragrant bowl in front of Steve and a basket of brown bread and white cheese on a napkin in the middle of the table. 

“I’m the one imposing,” said Steve just as meekly. His mouth watered at the smell of meat and spices. “Nat said something about a girls’ night out so I’d stay out of their way, but I _think_ I still get a room at the palace.”

“Might’ve figured they’d all hit it off.” His own plate filled with food, Bucky lowered himself into the blanket-filled chair. Steve began to eat when he did. “You staying for a while then?”

Steve fixed his gaze on his bowl, not sure what he’d find in Bucky’s eyes if he looked up. “Maybe a week. I just tagged along with Nat. Okoye’s got her guest-training the Dora Milaje.”

“She might learn a few things while she’s at it, too.” Only a supersoldier would have heard the softening in Bucky’s voice from one breath to the next. “How is she? I never got to thank her for what she did.”

Steve hesitated. _“It’s not my secret to tell,”_ Natasha had told him once, gently, in a rare unguarded moment for both of them.

“She’s fine. She’s on the lam now, I guess, like me.” Steve hesitated again. He supposed, in his old age, even he was learning to balance boldness with tact. “She wonders if you remember her.”

Bucky smiled, wan. “I remember everything.”

The thing was, Steve kept lists. He liked to be organized that way. He listed movies to watch, music to listen to, people to Google, and he listed things he was absolutely not ever allowed to say to Bucky, things like “I missed you”, “Nat only agreed to come because I wouldn’t stop moping”, and worst of all “I love you, I’ve loved you all my life, please don’t ever leave again or I won’t be responsible for what I’d do.” The words burned on the tip of his tongue now, like the spices Bucky had flavored his surprisingly tasty stew with. But Steve breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, and reminded himself to put his superhuman strength to good use, reining himself in. He’d burdened Bucky enough.

He uncovered a small, pointy, wrinkly-looking vegetable amidst the sauce and prodded at it curiously.

“Don’t worry, it’s all edible,” said Bucky dryly. “Gogo at the market gives me the baby carrots so I don’t have to slice or peel them anymore.”

Steve had eaten the unpeeled potatoes in his stew without comment. “That’s nice of them.” 

“They’re all pretty nice to me. They’re used to war injuries here.” Bucky went to refill his plate and, without asking, spooned a second helping into Steve’s empty bowl as well. “And they’re all called Gogo because I don’t think they trust me to get their real names right.”

Steve couldn’t help chuckling. Bucky’s answering smile was real this time, crinkled at the corners of his eyes, helped ease the clench in Steve’s chest.

There was a timid clattering of the bell at the gate. Steve started, but noticed that Bucky didn’t. Instead Bucky calmly wiped his mouth, set aside his plate, and got up. “Looks like it’s cocktail hour. Help yourself, I won’t be a minute.” 

Steve, of course, opted to hover at the window with a handful of bread and earthy, creamy cheese to watch Bucky meet a little boy outside the gate. The little boy ducked bashfully under Bucky’s hand scrubbing across his head in greeting. The boy thrust a covered basket at Bucky, then turned and practically fled, hardly waiting for Bucky’s surprised shout of thanks behind him.

“Shuri said something about the kids being a bad influence on you,” and Steve grinned as Bucky came back into the hut. Earthenware clinked from the depths of the basket in his hand.

“Yeah, you’d think I’da learned my lesson about that already.” The warmth in Bucky’s gray eyes was almost as good as a smile. He set the basket down on the kitchen table and took out a sealed jug. “But no, Aphelele doesn’t really run with the other kids. His dad just lets him hang out with me sometimes. Supposedly to practice his English, but I think he’s worried about his only son.” He broke the seal, sniffed at the mouth, and poured a frothy brown liquid into a couple of bowls. “And I think his mom was concerned I didn’t have any umqombothi to properly welcome my guest with tonight.”

The beer was dark and rich and slightly gritty, a pleasant cleanse of the goat stew from one’s mouth. Steve rolled the taste around on his tongue and almost didn’t care that it wouldn’t have any effect on him.

“I don’t mean to overstep my bounds,” he mused, “but he reminded me a little bit of Agnes McCluskey.” When Bucky tilted his head at him, Steve added, “We knew her brothers from Sunday school? Ten years old, curly brown hair, her mom waitressed at the automat down the block from—”

“Oh God. Little baby Agnes. I must’ve been, what, fifteen?” Bucky groaned into his hand. “Oh God, she gave me a _Valentine,_ I _remember_ now, you shit.”

Steve laughed. “We hid from her brothers for a while after that.” He took a long pull of his umqombothi. He’d have to ask T’Challa about the stuff. “She had good taste,” and he pretended he was only teasing, not actually agreeing. “I think she ended up marrying some other brunette, from Bay Ridge or so. Automat’s gone now though. There was a coffee shop there, last I checked.” 

He wondered with a pang when he’d get to walk around New York again. At the time, fresh out of the ice, he’d been almost resentful, assaulted by ugly newness almost everywhere he looked even when the lay of the streets and the brusqueness of passersby hadn’t changed. He’d kept thinking of Bucky, how Bucky would have cuffed him over the head for his lack of appreciation, would have dragged him from one sight to another until he gave in and laughed along and agreed it was all very, very solid. He’d had to remind himself each time that Bucky was dead.

It was part of why he’d moved to DC. But then that was a long time ago.

Bucky said nothing for a while, just shook his head ruefully down at the bread he was using to mop up the last of the stew on his plate. “Aphelele’s a sweet kid. His dad’ll come around. They have this whole epic tradition about”—Bucky was blushing—“these great ancient demigod warriors who just happened to love men.” 

The space of a breath skipped past. “I’m not surprised,” said Steve evenly. “They’re light-years ahead here in everything else.”

“Well, don’t out them now before they’re good and ready.” Bucky poured Steve another bowl of beer and, when the jug ran out, unsealed a second one from the same basket.

Steve drank it down, enjoyed the cool, faintly bitter tang in his mouth. “So you’re good here, huh?” He risked another glance over, just in time to catch Bucky quickly looking back down at his beer.

“I’ve got nothing to complain about.” Bucky’s smile was small now, humble.

Steve stood up to put his dishes in the sink. For a moment he felt odd and he realized, as he filled his cup from the tap and drank, that it might almost have been 1941 again, him and Bucky sharing another meal at the end of another long day in the cramped, airless tenement they’d called home.

“You always could get by on your own,” he said, forcing a smile.

Bucky stood up, correcting his balance easily. “Doesn’t mean I always wanted to. Hey, guests don’t do the dishes.” Bucky elbowed him out of the way and Steve staggered aside, still reeling from Bucky’s quiet reply. “You should take a shower before you head back. You stink worse than _me_ and I watch _goats_ all day, Steve, it’s embarrassing.”

“Your face is embarrassing,” Steve shot back over his shoulder, just for old times’ sake, before following the jerk of Bucky’s thumb through another curtained doorway into the most unexpectedly modern yet luxurious bathroom he’d ever seen.

He was still trying to shake the water out of his ears after he’d inadvertently leaned hard on the shower’s touch panel when he joined Bucky at a table outside behind the hut. Bucky poured him a cup of something piping hot from a teapot.

“Becca would rise from the grave for turning you out so soon, especially since you’ve come all this way,” Bucky started, sipping from his own drink, “but I’ve got an early start tomorrow and I’m an old man, Rogers, I need my beauty sleep.”

“It don’t look like it does you any good, Barnes,” said Steve, and as Bucky huffed out a grin despite himself, Steve pretended that the warmth blossoming in his gut was from the tea. He took another spicy, milky, subtly sweet sip and leaned forward on his elbows on top of the fence. He could see for miles past the goatshed in the distance to the evening-draped scrubland beyond, the starry sky above. Even with unenhanced vision, he guessed, it would be beautiful. “But if you want me to go, I’ll go.”

Silence fell between them and Steve listlessly scratched the warm, unglazed earthenware against his calloused palm. Maybe it was the beer or maybe the tea making him so brave, reckless even, in this one thing he still doubted everything about. 

“I don’t know what I get to want.” Bucky’s low voice cracked with honesty. “I don’t know what I get to have.”

Steve’s heart pounded in his throat and, for a hysterical half-second, he wondered if his old arrythmia had returned.

 _All of me,_ he wanted to say. _Just say the word._

He heard the scrape of footsteps behind him and Bucky settled next to him on the fence, cradling his teacup in his hand. Their shoulders brushed, Bucky’s stump warm and solid through soft cotton cloth. Steve thought briefly, fondness flaring, that Bucky would be easier to tuck under his arm this way.

“I was gonna check out a cave the elders pointed out to me, in the mountains, not far from here.” Bucky finished his tea and turned the empty cup round and round in his fingers. “Sometimes in the wet season they shelter there with the goats. Might be good for cheesemaking.” He flicked a measuring glance up at Steve. “Guess I could use an extra pair of hands.”

He smirked at his own joke and left, and Steve finally remembered to breathe.

_“Maybe he had the right idea all along, y’know. Maybe that was really the best thing that could’ve happened.”_

_Steve tried to ignore the cold plummet of his heart. Bucky had smiled, earlier; he’d played along when Steve had tried so hard to reach him, bringing up Dot and stuffed animals and that wretched ride home on the freezer truck when they’d squeezed into the passenger side of the cab and not said a word of complaint, even though Bucky could barely get his butt on the seat and Steve’s crooked back had ached terribly throughout. And after that in the silo Bucky had been as brave and strong and determined as Steve had ever seen him, battling Tony to try to escape out the missile hatch, later carving fingers into metal armor for the arc reactor._

_But now Bucky sounded dull and hollow again, defeated, and Steve risked a glance from the quinjet’s controls over his shoulder to where Bucky sat sagging against the interior wall. His face was still smudged with dried blood and he held one of Natasha’s pistols in his lap._

_“Who do you mean, Buck?” Steve fought to keep his voice low and even. No use escalating the situation._

_Bucky blinked slowly, unseeing. “Zemo.”_

_Steve exhaled. He’d been afraid of this ever since they’d stepped into that chamber and confronted the tanks, the thick glass that had splintered around neat, round little holes._

_“Please don’t.” He stared fixedly ahead through the windscreen, gripped the yoke as if it would make the jet go faster, cold dread growing in the pit of his stomach as he told himself as long as he didn’t turn around, nothing bad would happen. “Please, Buck. We’ll get to Wakanda soon and then—I dunno. He’s the king. He’ll think of something.” Steve swallowed painfully. “Please, just hang on, just a little longer.”_

_Bucky had fallen silent then. Maybe he’d heard the desperation in Steve’s voice, the last unsnapped threads of calm stretched tight over the roil of fear, and been as incapable of saying no to Steve as ever. He hadn’t said a word, had simply let go of the gun and feigned sleep still sitting up against the fuselage until the hours finally crawled past and they were descending onto the broad launchpad of a Wakandan palace._

_“I could stage it.” Steve jolted; this wasn’t how it had happened. The mechanical click of a safety thumbed off echoed across the cabin. Steve choked. “Done it before. They’ll take it in your favor. Apprehending an international terrorist. Self-defense. It’s better than nothing.”_

_“But it’s not nothing,” Steve panted, frozen in his seat, still staring doggedly in front at the clouds and the lightning, unable to tear his gaze away even if he’d dared to. His hands fisted on the controls and his mind filled with nothing else to say. “It’s_ not _nothing, Buck, please, God, don’t do this to me, it’s_ not nothing—”

Steve jerked awake with the gunshot, tears cold on his cheeks.

He broke the chair leaping out of it and across the tiny living space, nearly tearing apart the curtain at the doorway to find Bucky still sleeping in his cot.

Steve sagged against the doorjamb, not taking his eyes off of Bucky, thanking a God he hadn’t prayed to in years and years.

Bucky twitched and mumbled in his sleep. Well, it wasn’t like Steve still had a chair to lie down in now, so he stretched out on the rug beside Bucky’s bed. _Not like I wanna be anywhere else anyway._

Outside the hut, night blanketed the world in stillness. Bucky groaned in dreamworld pain, his eyelids fluttering, and he curled up under his blanket with a long, miserable shudder. Steve found himself moving toward the cot before he knew it.

“Hey Buck.” Steve took Bucky’s hand, grasped his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” And when Bucky began to moan, plaintive and incoherent, Steve kissed his forehead, squeezed his fingers, new tears gathering under eyelashes.

He looked back down to find Bucky staring at him, stock-still, eyes wide but bleary.

“Steve,” Bucky breathed, as if any louder would break the spell.

“Yeah, buddy.” Steve pressed Bucky’s hand to his lips. He didn’t want to think anymore, just wanted to soothe, reassure. Bucky in his bed smelled much the same as seventy years ago, warm and close and musky under soap. “I’m right here, don’t you worry.”

Bucky lunged up and kissed him then, licked into his mouth desperately as if to consume him alive, and Steve had to brace himself on his elbows on either side of Bucky on the cot. Balancing himself against Bucky’s hungry, suckling kisses, Steve trembled with the need to hold back. He was acutely aware that he was hard as a rock and steeled himself against the impulse to find out if Bucky was too. 

He broke the kiss with a gasp. Gently he helped Bucky lie back down, dropped chaste, closed kisses on Bucky’s mouth and nose and cheek even as he shivered with the force of his want. Bucky stilled under him, swallowing audibly, and clutched at his wrist.

“We can’t both fit on the bed, Buck,” Steve whispered. He didn’t want to risk breaking whatever bittersweet magic this was, either. “Stay down on the floor with me?”

Bucky nodded and climbed wordlessly over the edge of the cot. He might have fallen in a heap if Steve hadn’t caught him in time, chuckling low. He lay docilely as Steve wrapped him up in the blanket from his bed. Neither of them said anything when Bucky’s hardness brushed up against Steve’s thigh, though Steve felt the heat rush to his face and a tremor run through his body and he pressed another lingering kiss to Bucky’s forehead, hoping it would speak for him.

They drifted back to sleep with Bucky’s cheek pillowed on Steve’s shoulder, their hands clasped on top of Steve’s broad chest.

Steve had finally gotten the stove going under the kettle when he sensed movement behind him and turned to find Bucky standing in the doorway to his room, blinking at him in the morning sunshine. He looked adorably rumpled.

“I overslept.” Bucky rubbed his eyes. “You’re still here.”

“Yeah, well.” Steve rubbed at his stubbled chin to try to hide his flushed cheeks. “I owe you a chair. Got any coffee?” he added as Bucky shuffled off toward the bathroom.

“The best.” Bucky yawned. “Sack over by the water jar. Mill in the cupboard above the spoons.” Then he was gone with the sound of water running.

Steve was still grappling with the hand mill when Bucky came back to the kitchen, teeth brushed, face damp and pink. Steve pretended he wasn’t staring, rapt with the quiet domesticity of it all, as Bucky padded over and measured out grains into a pot from another sack he kept in a sideboard. Then Bucky glanced over and glared.

“The hell, Steve, you makin’ coffee for the whole neighborhood? That stuff doesn’t grow on trees, y’know.”

Steve caught himself and laughed. He had, in fact, heaped a ridiculous amount of coffee beans into the mill and had been grinding absent-mindedly ever since. Bucky gave him another mock-withering look as he took the whistling kettle off the flame and put the pot on to boil.

After a moment’s thought, Steve shrugged and dumped all the grounds into a cafetière he found next to the coffee mill. He figured it would take that much to have any effect on them anyway. “I should get you one of those machines they put in every other room at the compound. They make coffee in _seconds_ from these really expensive little pods.” 

“Shuri would have you shot, and I’d volunteer to do it. You think she hasn’t made something five times faster and ten times more environmentally friendly?” Bucky, stirring the porridge, paused to brandish his wooden spoon for emphasis. “I like it like this. Kind of reminds me of how things used to be.”

He seemed to realize what he’d just said and stiffened, biting his lip. Steve busied himself emptying the kettle into the coffee, swirling the grounds to level them out in the steaming hot water. 

“How things used to be, but better, I think.” Steve kept his tone deliberately light. He cast about for cutlery to set the table with, anything to keep his hands occupied when he yearned to reach out instead. “We sure never had coffee this good.”

Bucky spared him half a smile, aimed fixedly at the simmering porridge. “We couldn’t afford coffee that good.”

The hollow note in Bucky’s voice made Steve’s heart ache, his breath seize, reminded him of his horrible dream. “I wish everyday we could go back, Buck.” The words echoed in his mind from Peggy, white-haired yet iron-willed still in her hospice bed. “If only so I could do things over. Jump after you, for God’s sake.” He’d never said any of this out loud, had never dared, not even with Sam. He choked back a sob; he had no right to cry. 

Silently Bucky brought the pot to the table and shut the lid on the stove so that the fire would die out. Porridge scented the air, sweet and plain and homey. Bucky brought over two bowls, then dropped onto the stool, as if finally at the end of his strength.

“Why are you here, Steve.” 

Steve might have welcomed a gunshot wound or three instead.

He poured the coffee into two mugs, mechanical, light-headed. “Because I can’t stay away unless you want me to.”

Bucky’s mouth curled at the corner in a shadow of his old, heartbreaking grin. “Or unless I hide.”

Steve nodded, numb. Two years of barely contained despair flashed before his eyes. “Or that, yeah.”

Bucky stood up. Avoiding Steve’s gaze, he spooned porridge into their bowls, pushed a sugarpot and milk jug across the table. “I had to fix some things,” he said quietly. “I was sick for a while. It wasn’t pretty.”

Steve swallowed back all the times Bucky had patiently looked after him before, when he’d been the one sick and weak and difficult. “You’ve never had anything to be ashamed of, Buck.”

Bucky wrapped his hand around his mug, his mouth twisting again, tired and slow. “We can’t go back, Steve.” He sounded as though he’d long since wished he could, had already tried and failed, many times, over and over.

Tentatively Steve reached out, covered Bucky’s hand with his. It felt like it had a thousand times before; it felt like everything was new again. Bucky’s bony knuckles, cool calloused skin, powerful fingers—Steve traced with his fingertip a faint raised scar across the back of Bucky’s hand, barely visible but still there to be found where he’d cut himself open on something or other, the boys scrambling heedlessly through a scrapyard one summer day long ago.

They’d been lucky he hadn’t caught tetanus or something. Steve smiled, wondering if Bucky remembered. “I wouldn’t need you to, Buck.”

Bucky’s fingers twitched beneath Steve’s. But then the komoyo beads around his wrist chirruped an alert, and they both jumped. Exhaling, Bucky scanned the readout as Steve stirred milk and sugar into his porridge.

“They wanna borrow you for some formal lunch thing at the palace. Shuri says to expect your ride outside in about ten minutes.” Bucky sipped from his mug and grimaced. “Well, one thing’s the same all right: You still make shit coffee, Rogers.”

It was long after sunset and his driver, dropping him off, had not hidden the twinkle in his eye, but Steve felt only slightly foolish heading down the hill toward Bucky’s hut with an energy-independent lantern hanging from one arm and an extra-large folding chair tucked under the other. Queen Ramonda had laughingly insisted he appropriate it from the palace’s storerooms.

“Nat took over my room,” he explained when Bucky, hair still dripping from a bath, opened the door. “Said I got the better TV.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna last long either,” and Bucky cast a skeptical eye over his new, spindly-looking royal cast-off furniture as he let Steve in.

“Yeah, I should probably just take the floor again. I got you some dessert though.”

Bucky’s face brightened at the enormous string-tied parcel Steve brought out of his duffel bag. It was a far cry from Bucky’s old, appreciative grin whenever Steve smuggled sweets back for him from meetings with the brass, but Steve felt his heart fracture anyway.

Bucky went to bed early that night, the rare hit of so much sugar at once fading fast; or maybe it was Steve who found he couldn’t rest. He was sitting up by the outside table sketching, the pot of tea by his elbow already stone-cold, when he heard Bucky muttering in his sleep.

It was garbled Russian, Bucky frowning and grunting, lying stiffly under his tangled-up blanket as if pinned down. Steve ignored the vague feeling of _dejà vu_ as he entered Bucky’s moonlit room. He would do this every night if he had to, however many times it took.

“Hey, Buck, it’s okay.” Brushing aside sweat-damp hair and pressing a kiss to Bucky’s clammy forehead didn’t feel so forbidden anymore, God help him. Bucky’s hand tightened on his—pushing him away or holding on, Steve couldn’t tell. Bucky’s other shoulder worked, shifting restlessly under the covers. Steve wondered if Bucky still had his left arm in his dream. “You’re safe, you’re with me, it’s okay.” 

Bucky’s eyes flew open as he gasped in a long, frantic breath. Tears glittered on his face. “Steve?”

“Right here, buddy, I’m all yours.” Bucky’s fingertips were cold against Steve’s lips, his cheek.

“Steve.” Bucky gulped, eyes wide and staring. “Steve. I murdered. I murdered a child.”

Steve could say nothing, just held him close. Bucky sagged against him, unresisting.

“She saw me. Kill her parents. I tracked her down a week later, I. I couldn’t leave witnesses.” 

He was shaking all over, but it wasn’t til Steve jerked instinctively at the damp spreading down his shirt that he realized Bucky was weeping, biting deep into his fist, breath hissing wet between his teeth.

“So don’t ever wake me, Steve,” Bucky graveled out, once he had wrestled down the fit. “Don’t you ever fucking wake me up. It’s the least I can do. To remember.”

Steve hadn’t stopped stroking down Bucky’s back, hoping it soothed him. “I’ll just be here when you do, Buck. As long as you’ll let me.”

“God. Don’t say that.” Bucky pulled back and coughed out a laugh, short and harsh, hiding his face in the fall of his hair. He dug his fingers into Steve’s arm as if to reassure himself that Steve was real. “You don’t know how selfish I can be, Steve.”

Steve shuddered. Bucky so close, so warm and urgent was doing things to him, stirring up thoughts and desires he’d always fought to keep down. He was only human, Bucky always his single worst weakness. “I want you to be, with me. C’mon, Buck.” Bucky’s mouth was dangerously close to his; Bucky’s breaths prickled on his skin, hot and labored. “I can take it. I can take whatever you wanna give me.”

Bucky’s kiss was hard and bruising, salty with sweat and tears. Steve had never tasted anything better. He slid them down to the floor, never breaking the kiss; he forced himself to go limp under Bucky’s hand on his shoulder, lowered himself onto the rug by the bed. Bucky straddling him, looming over him set off something in his blood and Steve thrust his hips up thoughtlessly, once, twice, before he managed to will himself still, panting hard with the effort. He bared his throat willingly to Bucky licking and sucking his way down, beard scoring hypersensitive skin. He moaned at the scrape of Bucky’s palm across his hardened nipple, then hissed when Bucky gripped him, hard and yearning through his jeans.

Steve couldn’t get out of his clothes fast enough while Bucky shrugged off his robe and fumbled for a jar stored under the cot. This time it was Steve who surged forward, kissing Bucky fervently, but he soon yielded to the drag of Bucky’s teeth on his lip, the delicate suckle on the very tip of his tongue. Steve’s nerves sang and his breathing stuttered as Bucky kissed down his chest, mouthed at one taut rosy nipple then the other. Trembling with restraint Steve fisted his hands at his sides, afraid to set off ugly memories with a clumsy, unwanted caress. But Bucky squeezed down his shaft, thumbed around the head, palmed his balls, and Steve couldn’t help a long, thready moan. 

“Steve,” Bucky murmured into Steve’s mouth, trailing sloppy fingers around his hole, pressing more firmly when Steve groaned and tossed his head. “Sweetheart. Stevie.” It was an old nickname, laid begrudgingly to rest after one of their few genuine boyhood arguments, but now Steve couldn’t for the life of him remember why they’d dropped it, Bucky made it sound so sweet. His legs fell open to the tender tightness of Bucky’s grip up and down his cock, the rasp of callouses against the soft skin of his balls. “I’ve only ever wanted you. You gotta know.”

“Bucky, Bucky,” gasped Steve, nearly sobbing as Bucky dipped the very tips of his fingers briefly into his hole, slip-sliding on the rim. Steve’s hips jerked up, chasing after Bucky’s touch. “Me—me too. Only you.”

Bucky chuckled low, nipped longingly at Steve’s lip, and slicked himself up with a groan part pleasure, part tenuous control. “You really would, too, wouldn’t you Stevie. You crazy moron.” He rested his forehead against Steve’s chest for a moment as if to brace himself, worshipped a nipple with a wet, slow kiss. “You’d go all the way our first time just for me.”

“Anything for you, Buck,” Steve ground out, meeting blue eyes with blue. “You know that. Anything.”

Bucky looked away almost shyly, ghosted kisses around the last streaks of Steve’s mad blushing toward his navel. “Yeah, I know that, Stevie. I know that now.”

But he lifted Steve’s hand from where it was grabbing fruitlessly at the rug beneath him and he put it on both their cocks gliding together, wet and slippery and so incredible with sensation that they cried out at the same time. Steve began stroking hard and Bucky slumped against him, breathing raggedly, beard sparking against pebbled skin as he slipped a finger back into Steve as deep as it would go.

Soft muscles clenched and quivered around him and Steve ground down haplessly onto his hand. “Buck, please, I’m—ah—”

Then Steve was coming, breathing fast and brittle as he spilled himself up Bucky’s chest and his own, and Bucky was coming too, Steve’s staggered little gasps in his ear the most erotic thing he had ever heard. Bucky thrust hard into Steve’s grasp, pushing the silky head of his cock into Steve’s skin and smearing the wetness already puddling there as if desperate to feel more, to feel more of _him._ Wrapping his hand tight, swirling his thumb in the mess of slick Steve milked him instinctively, Bucky blindly riding his orgasm through to the very end with a last, rough, convulsive groan.

He collapsed on top of Steve, panting, their hearts racing together. Bucky gently withdrew his finger and Steve shuddered out a moan, inner muscles clinging.

“Next time, hotshot.” Bucky chuckled, puffs of hot breath tickling superheated skin. “I’m not quite there just yet. You short me out, Stevie. Need to take a minute.”

“’Kay, Buck. That’s okay. This is good.” Steve exhaled a laugh at his own eloquence. “This is plenty good.” 

He helped Bucky wipe up the mess with his shirt, then dropped it discreetly on top of his cock, which was importunately hard again and curved up insolently into the cool night air. Bucky gave him a look that asked him who he thought he was fooling, but let Steve cuddle him close anyway and drop kisses into his hair. 

“Still gotta see about that cave in a while,” mumbled Bucky into Steve’s chest. “You don’t gotta come along if you’d rather rest up.”

“No, Buck, c’mon, I wanna.” He would take anything Bucky cared to give him. It was still true. Steve raised Bucky’s fingers to his lips for another, sleepy kiss. “Just wake me up.”

He woke to Bucky poised over him in the semidarkness, shaking him none too gently, mouth curled in amusement. 

“You snore even louder than I nightmare. Time to get up, punk.”

It was an easy trek in the cool pre-dawn half-light, following a clear trail through tree-dotted scrubland up into foothills that soon roughened into stony crags. Bucky walked ahead, belt hung with a bright lantern and a pouch jingling quietly with metal things that Steve took a moment to assume were not deadly weapons. Bucky leading the way contrasted refreshingly with memories from the war and Steve hung back, happy to watch Bucky in peace with what he didn’t doubt was his heart in his eyes.

Once Bucky stopped and turned to him. Caught off guard, Steve stared back.

Bucky quirked a smile, but it was sad and small. “You’re a sap, Rogers.”

He would never deny it. Steve reached forward, tangled their fingers together. “Only for you, you jerk.”

Bucky searched his face for a moment, then turned back without a word, squeezed Steve’s hand and dropped it, and continued on. 

Loose stones skidded under their feet as they plodded on into higher ground, seldom speaking except to point out safer footing, clumps of dung to avoid. Greenery thinned out. Bucky turned off his lantern in the lifting gloom. The windblown landscape and Bucky hiking wordlessly at his side reminded Steve, not altogether unpleasantly, of wartime missions, a continent and the better part of a century away. They topped a rocky rise and, as one, came to a halt and stood in silence for a while, their ears popping, to watch the day break gleaming over the blue-misted horizon. 

“Themba’s out early today,” Bucky commented, as if Steve would know who he was talking about. Steve squinted at the gaggle of small, dark shapes slowly traversing the savanna below, a turbaned man in front.

“Sheep?” he guessed.

Bucky nodded, sharp eyes restlessly flitting across the view. Steve swallowed back the image of him picking out targets amidst smoke and wreckage, against a Ukrainian cliff-face. One target a redhead, shielding the other. “He does some amazing things with the milk.”

The cave mouth yawned over the path on the leeward side of the mountain, bathed in pale sunshine by the time they arrived. Bucky came up to the entrance and stopped short. Steve, engrossed in the play of light in a vast cobweb, nearly walked right into him.

Bucky stood stiffly, his breaths catching, wide eyes seeing nothing in the shadows inside.

“Buck. You okay?” Steve reached out cautiously. Bucky’s hand was cold. “We can try this again another time.”

After a second Bucky seemed to recover himself with a long, labored gasp of air, turning a dazed look on Steve. He didn’t resist, just smiled weakly as Steve entwined their fingers. “Maybe not as good with cracks in the rock as I thought I would be.”

Steve didn’t ask. He drew Bucky close, kissed his forehead. “Not a problem. Wanna call it a day?”

Bucky shook his head stubbornly. “’S fine. I’m fine. I can do this. We’re already—” He stilled, brought his hand up. 

Steve strained. “What’s wrong?”

Whispers only a supersoldier would hear. Faint shuffling, like sandals on stone. Bucky peered into the cavern. “Maybe someone spent the night. Hello?” he called. 

His voice echoed inside, unheeded.

Bucky passed the lantern to Steve, who lit it up and held it high. But the cave mouth was shallow and soon funneled into a sideways passage, too narrow for more than one person at a time, and the ground descended swiftly into darkness. Bedrock bulged massively into the space, rounded smooth with age. A breeze whistled across the close walls.

“If someone’s taken over this place without the elders knowing,” Bucky murmured to Steve as they began to venture in, “it’s considered a communal space, so they’d have to take it up with—oh.” He fell back. “Uh, excuse us.”

A young man, unarmed, had suddenly loomed up out of the shadows of the downward passage. He glared distrustfully at Bucky, then at Steve as he stepped past, then he turned and extended a hand to the young woman who had just as suddenly appeared behind him, clutching her slightly dusty dress to herself. Recognition flickered in her dark eyes as she moved to pass Bucky, and she stopped and caught up his hand in both of hers. Gazing up at him hopefully, she said something low and pleading. Bucky’s eyes were almost as wide as hers.

“Yeah, no, don’t worry,” he said in English, then, “uhm—” he told her something in halting isiXhosa.

At his words she smiled gratefully back, darted an earnest glance over at Steve, then, when the young man spoke to her urgently, went and followed him on down the trail the way Steve and Bucky had come. Steve couldn’t help watching them carefully pick their way across the rocks down the slope, hand in hand.

“Ah, the springtime of life,” drawled Bucky beside him. When Steve turned to look, Bucky wore the biggest, shit-eatingest grin Steve had seen on him in seventy-four years, so much like old times that Steve’s heart ached inside him. “That’s Aphelele’s second sister, by the way. I promised we wouldn’t tell on her.”

Steve couldn’t take his eyes off him. “C’mon, our springtime wasn’t that long ago.”

“We’re at least a fall.” But Bucky’s face was alight with mischief and sweetness as he looked up at Steve, who really couldn’t be blamed for pressing their mouths together right then and there. The kiss tasted like an oasis after long days in the desert. 

“Summer,” Steve bargained, panting into Bucky’s hair.

He let Bucky flip them and push him up against the rock, Bucky’s wet open mouth on his neck a sly indulgence above, the hard-on grinding against Steve’s a temptation below. Steve ended up gasping for air.

“Indian summer.” Bucky was still grinning. 

Steve grinned back helplessly, thumbed the tilt of Bucky’s luscious mouth, enthralled and hoping. “You sure about this, Buck?”

Bucky’s eyes met his, clear and steady, bluer than ever in the early light. “They’ve taken enough from me, Steve.” 

They kissed, deep and slow and filthy with promise. Steve's head was spinning. “We’ll find someplace else," Bucky breathed, beard feathering against Steve's jaw. "Wouldn’t wanna put the local kids out.” He smiled. “Wind’s wrong here anyway.” 

He kissed Steve again, more gently, rutted their hips together, and Steve heard himself moan into Bucky’s mouth as if from far away. 

“Some other time?” Steve cupped Bucky’s face in his hands, loving every tiny dimple and crease, every hazel fleck in those storm-sky eyes and every sunspot on those wind-reddened cheeks. There was a small patch of white in the scruff off the right side of Bucky’s face. It was straight out of Steve’s dreams to hold Bucky like this, make him feel everything Steve felt about him, the way Steve had never been brave enough to do before. 

Bucky studied him back, just as intent. “Yeah, let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been curious how our dear favorite boys worked through the implications of CA:CW. This was my humble attempt at figuring things out.
> 
> Also, I always hope I've been respectful and adequately knowledgeable in my stuff and this time is no different. Corrections and feedback always welcome <3


End file.
